Combating impunity, from commitment to action
This afternoon we sent out a press release announcing a $100,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to support CPJ’s Global Campaign Against Impunity. The campaign enters its third year in 2011, having achieved some significant successes, including high-level commitment to prosecute the killers of journalist in the Philippines and Russia.…
Suspect says he was hired to silence broadcaster
Police in the southern Philippine province of Palawan have an unusual head start in their investigation of Monday’s murder of radio broadcaster Gerardo Ortega. They apprehended the assassin at the scene, with the help of local firefighters and bystanders, and an unusual amount of information about the killing is already in the public domain.
In Sri Lanka, press marks a bitter anniversary
In recent years, January has emerged as Sri Lanka’s cruelest month for journalists. To commemorate that ugly fact, 100 journalists and press freedom activists gathered Tuesday outside the Fort Railway Station in the capital, Colombo, demanding that the government expedite investigations into a series of attacks and January killings that occurred in both 2009 and…
In Pakistan, anti-press attacks spread beyond border
The death of a journalist in Karachi last week shows that violence in Pakistan is occurring well beyond the border areas with Afghanistan. On Thursday evening, Pakistani television reporter Wali Khan Babar was executed shortly after airing a report on gang violence in the city.
Honduran journalist gunned down in front of home
New York, December 30, 2010–Honduran radio reporter and cable news presenter Henry Suazo was shot to death Tuesday morning as he was leaving his home in La Masica, a town in Atlántida province, according to news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Honduran authorities to conduct an immediate and thorough investigation into the…
Deyda Hydara, a friend and colleague murdered in impunity
I can still vividly recall how the news of Deyda Hydara’s killing was relayed to me on the morning of December 17, 2004, after I returned from a trip to Zambia the previous night. Very early that morning, I called his childhood friend and partner at The Point, Pap Saine, who told me: “They shot…
In Norbert Zongo case, 12 years of impunity
For Geneviève Zongo, every December 13 revives excruciating memories of the loss of her husband Norbert Zongo, editor of the weekly L’Indépendant. He was assassinated in 1998 while investigating the murder of a driver working at Burkina Faso’s presidential palace. More painful still is that the killers who ambushed Zongo’s car, riddling it with bullets and…
Marking Maguindanao, events for reflection, justice
Tuesday is the anniversary of the deadliest attack on the press ever recorded by CPJ. On November 23, 2009, 32 journalists and media workers were shot and killed in a massacre of 57 people in Ampatuan, in the southern province of Maguindanao. The victims were part of a convoy accompanying the supporters and relatives of…
CPJ’s Smyth in Harvard Review: Facing impunity is key
Harvard International Review ran a feature article called “Murdering With Impunity: The Rise in Terror Tactics Against News Reporters,” by CPJ’s Journalist Security Coordinator Frank Smyth in its Fall 2010 issue, billed as a symposium focused on changes in journalism and press freedom. Editors-in-Chief Collin Galster and Gloria Park write in the printed issue’s foreword: